Editing Pittheus (section)

=== Two heroes ===
A Troezenian legend of the earliest notable event of Theseus' life is set in the house of Pittheus.<ref name=":3" /> After he had finished his labours, [[Heracles]] came to visit Pittheus. He laid his lion-skin down on a couch where it sat in a most lifelike fashion. A little while later Theseus, who was seven years old at this time, came into the room with some of his schoolmates. When the other children saw the skin of the [[Nemean lion]], they ran from it in terror, thinking that it was alive. However, Theseus remained in the room, grabbed an axe from a nearby guard, and attacked the lion-skin.<ref>Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'', ''1. 27. 7''</ref>

When Heracles became slave of [[Omphale]] in [[Lydia]], villains burst forth and broke in the regions of Hellas because no one would rebuke and restrain them. The journey was therefore a perilous one for travelers by land from Peloponnesus to Athens, and Pittheus, by describing each of the miscreants at length, what sort of a monster he was, and what deeds he wrought upon strangers, tried to persuade Theseus to make his journey by sea. But the hero, secretly inspired by the valor of his cousin Heracles, paid no heed of his grandfather's warnings, traveled by the road and eventually cleared it from brigands and bandits that infested it.<ref>Plutarch. ''Theseus, 6.5-6''</ref>